100 Years of Quietude: Boettcher Mansion is Having an Anniversary

If the walls of Boettcher Mansion could talk, they’d have a lot of joyful stories to tell.

After Colorado businessman Charles Boettcher commissioned the secluded retreat atop Lookout Mountain in Golden in 1917, it was used as a private home for several generations of the Boettcher family before being donated to Jefferson County for public use. Since then, the Arts & Crafts landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has become one of the area’s most popular wedding sites, hosting a couple hundred weddings per year and favored for its extra-large rooms, beautiful views and sense of sylvan coziness.

“You can’t really beat the location,” says Cynthia Shaw, director of the mansion. “Here we are on Lookout Mountain, nestled in the forest in the middle of a nature preserve with elk and other animals. It’s very quiet up here, and it’s like you’ve got the mansion all to yourself, so there is this lovely sense of being one with nature.”

For large weddings, the cathedral-ceilinged Fireside Room, once the mansion’s living room, opens onto a raised terrace that faces Denver, with each space holding up to 200 people. For more intimate ceremonies, there is also a carriage house (with its own patio, bathroom and kitchen) that can hold up to 40 people and a gazebo that Boettcher built as a little hunting spot, which can hold up to 20 people.

At 7,500 feet elevation, bridal parties feel like they are on top of the world—in more ways than one.